


From Which Light Has Sprung

by LittleRedCosette



Series: Resplendence [7]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hope, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Murder, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Inception, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 02:09:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12901698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRedCosette/pseuds/LittleRedCosette
Summary: It was Yusuf who figured it out.(It was two and a half years before anybody told Arthur.)





	From Which Light Has Sprung

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea if this will make sense without reading the previous stories in this series, but you're welcome to give it a go! I'd advise you go back a read the other Resplendence episodes first, though.
> 
> Please read and review and tell me your thoughts and be happy.

 

.

.

It’s a misplaced word that does it. A misplaced word and the cat-killing curiosity of a man who deals in knowing the unknowable.

He digs delicately, and he digs deep.

It’s a lonely, bleak day in March when he finds what he’s looking for.

Afterwards, he makes himself a whisky sour and downs it in one gulp. The sugar shocks his system into waking from its stupor and the alcohol burns his throat enough to mask the other pains that accompany his escape from the blissful tonic of ignorance.

He makes another, but he doesn’t drink it.

He toasts the dead, splashes it on the floor like a heathen, smiles at the absent approval.

Then he gets to work.

.

.

 _You need to be the one to tell him,_ he says.

 _I will,_ Dom promises.

(It takes thirty months.)

.

.

_( _I’m not brave anymore darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me.)__

.

.

The first person Arthur fucks after Eames is dead is a woman. She’s demanding and lean, with runner’s thighs and nails painted dark purple. She has long black hair that he tangles easily around his fingers and dark brown eyes heavy-lidded with the weight of her mascara.

Roshni is sly, with a keen sense of humour that she sharpens regularly and a fondness for jobs that end in divorce and lawsuits. Eames had referred to her as a grass snake the first time they worked together and at the time Arthur had thought he meant it as an insult.

Afterwards, there’s not so much a glow as a dim. Arthur’s out of breath and he tries to pass it off as passion but the oxygen refuses to reach his lungs, leaving him trembling in their hotel bed like a newly popped virgin.

Roshni doesn’t say anything at first. She lies down on her back next to him, the heat of her body filling up his senses with salt. She takes his hand and lets him squeeze until her knuckles start to crunch together.

They’d never tried very hard to be subtle, later on. After the Fischer Job, after the truce in Bangkok and the alcohol poisoning and the barbiturates hidden in the seam of the wrong jacket, it seemed pointless to go out of their way to pretend they were anything than less than  _them._

Still, there’s no knowing who’s going to throw his name out into the ether at inopportune moments, like when he’s having a panic attack in a hotel room while his dick’s still wet and his lover’s lying next to him with her legs half open.

“Faithfulness isn’t going to bring Eames back,” she reminds him with unmerciful disdain.

Which is true, very true.

All the self-denial in the world won’t bring him back.

.

.

(But Arthur isn’t ready to face that yet.)

.

.

It takes two weeks for Arthur to work another job after Kaunas. The ripples haven’t reached their furthest and not one member of the team he works with knows Eames is dead yet.

Not even Toby, who once got stuck on a second level with Eames inside the mind of an ex-marine while the dream melted into a PTSD nightmare, a rearing, gnashing chimera of San Diego and Kabul.

It’s one of the dreams Arthur never got all the details of and there’s an inexplicable fraction of a second in Baltimore during the planning when Arthur almost asks Toby about it, before he realises he can’t even say the Englishman’s name aloud yet, so asking questions about his past is out of the question.

(Telling another human being he’s dead is out of the question. He hadn’t even told Saito, not really. He’d just garbled and sobbed and hoped he would understand.)

.

.

(He did.)

.

.

It takes four and a half months for Arthur to call Cobb after Marrakesh.

(It takes fifty-two hours without sleep, two bottles of Jameson’s and almost smashing up his new PASIV for Arthur to call Cobb after Marrakesh.)

Cobb answers the phone after several rings in a tone of distracted impatience.

“Yes,” he barks down the phone.

There are no screaming children in the background, which means the frantic voice is the result of work, not fatherhood, thus less easily distilled by far.

Arthur waits a beat, long enough to debate whether now really is the time for an awkward reunion call.

Long enough for Cobb’s brain to logic leapfrog to the inevitable conclusion.

 _“Arthur?”_ he asks, quieter than before.

Arthur considers hanging up.

Around him, fountains splash and joggers overtake each other and children terrorise ducks with loaves of bread. There’s a damp post-rain chill in St. James’ Park.

Arthur sits on a bench, letting it all bustle around him, one hand curled around his cell phone pressed cold to his ear.

 _“Don’t hang up,”_ Cobb says knowingly. _“Please tell me you’re ok.”_

Arthur laughs at that, a throaty sound, like the gipping ducks.

“I’m ok,” he parrots.

On the other end of the line, Cobb sighs.

_“I’ve been worried about you.”_

“Your concern is noted,” Arthur snipes, then feels bad because Cobb’s concern would actually be welcome in just about any other circumstance. “I know I disappeared on you.”

His hinting remorseful tone is as close to an apology as Cobb is likely to drag out of him. Cobb seems to realise this, probably appreciates it because he breezes on,

_“Nice job in Belarus. I hear Leadsen Corp is satisfied.”_

Arthur snorts.

“You’re supposed to be retired,” he says accusingly.

 _“I am,”_ Cobb retorts, false indignation and spluttering. _“I’m on active retirement.”_

It’s better than Arthur expected of him. He’d always assumed the novelty of fatherhood would wear thin like his patience, but true to his word Cobb hasn’t taken an extraction job since he handed his bonus paycheque to Yusuf after the Fischer Job.

If he keeps his ears open and a spare phone for old unnameable contacts, well. Arthur really is the last person to judge.

“You’re a lost cause,” he says anyway, because he can, now, the way he used to, before that blade started to bite too close to the bone.

 _“Aren’t we all?”_ Cobb murmurs in return.

Arthur has no response to that one.

His throat tightens. He stares at the fountain further down the slope, where swans laze across the disturbed water out of reach of the toddlers stretching through the bars of the fence towards their snowy feathers.

Cobb must hear it in his silence. The burning need.

_“What can I do for you, Arthur?”_

He asks it like it might be anything, the merciful bastard. Leaves him room for this to be a social call and ask about the kids, or even a work call and ask about a dreamscape. Arthur stares at the swans until they’ve crossed the small lake to the other side, their wings arched to channel the breeze.

There’s a hangover hiding behind the numbing chill in his chest and his forehead. His hands shake.

“You loved Mal,” he says before he can stop himself. It pours out of him like a fountain, relentless. “You loved her so much you couldn’t - she was - you - she was  _there._ Everywhere. You loved her, and you couldn’t let her - even - I know you couldn’t. Control it. She was always there. I think maybe more than you ever let on. Or I knew.”

He’s wearing the pilot jacket, sweating in it, cocooned in the raw sheep’s wool like armour against grief, but it’s just trapping the sadness inside with him.

If Cobb hangs up right now, Arthur won’t blame him at all.

But he doesn’t.

Arthur tries very hard not to be the grown man crying alone in the park surrounded by jolly families and just when he thinks he might have it under control, Cobb speaks.

 _“Arthur,”_ he says, shocked and afraid. _“Are you - umm,”_ he says. Arthur can picture him exactly, the frown and the hand in his hair and the elbows on his desk in the pink and red room that now doubles up as office and toy cupboard. _“Have you seen Eames?”_

The last straw is light and gentle and spoken with such tepid sympathy that Arthur, the curving back of the wounded camel, doesn’t so much break as shatter.

“No!” he gasps into the phone.

That’s when he starts crying.

It isn’t loud or disruptive or even probably very noticeable at all, not with dogs barking and children running away and parents following with sore knees and panicked shouts. Humiliation scorches him all the same, leaving him sunburnt red and full of tears.

It takes a long time for Cobb’s voice to come back. In fits and starts Cobb’s voice returns, or perhaps it’s Arthur’s hearing.

The sky is grey and so is the water in the fountain and Cobb’s voice, blue and easy.

_“...that wasn’t it, you hear me? Arthur, what you saw, what I - Mal was. She wasn’t there because I loved her. Ok? She was there because I felt - guilty. It was guilt, ok? Not love. I blamed myself. And you - you shouldn’t. If you do, don’t. And for God’s sake, don’t feel_ _\- ashamed_ _of being strong enough to survive intact. Eames -_ _being_ _there or not being there. That isn’t some measure of - of anything. Not even of guilt. But definitely not of love.”_

The crying stops as quickly as it started. Tears and choking, then, stillness.

Arthur clears his throat. He can still taste whisky in the back of his tongue.

 _“Arthur?”_ Cobb asks.

“Understood,” Arthur replies coolly, because it’s easier to follow directives than to bask in sympathy. “Thanks, Dom.”

Cobb clears his throat, too, but he still sounds choked up when he replies, _“Anytime, Arthur.”_

.

.

Mourning is a laborious process.

It takes an expenditure of energy that Arthur simply doesn’t have the time for.

He finds answers of evasion and productive diversion. He goes to Los Angeles to extract from a Class A prisoner as a favour to a governor’s aide. The money isn’t good, but the calling card for the next time he gets into a pickle overseas will come in handy one day.

He works hard, drinks gin and avoids Paris like it’s 1879.

Then Pauline calls, asking about a favour in Milan. She promises him a remote villa with a dilapidated vineyard.

She’d liked Eames, though had never had use for a forger on her jobs. It makes her unsentimental and valuable. Flippancy drags her tongue and as she bids goodbye she says, _“O _h, and I’m using your Architect. You know, the Canadian girl.”__

There is no excuse to back out now that won’t be anything other than shameful.

So, he flies business class to Milan, stays in the villa for two weeks by himself, drinking local wine and laying the groundwork before Pauline arrives, her faithful chemist Ifan in tow.

Ariadne arrives two days later.

She wasn’t warned, that much is clear. He can tell as much by the whites of her eyes and the jerk of her head as she nods at him.

 _It’s good to see you,_ she says like the novice she used to be. He hears the silent  _alive_ she tacks onto the end of it.

She’s professional and awkward for the first week or so. She speaks politely, distantly. She relocates to the drawing room when Arthur claims the kitchen as his office. But her questions, unasked as they are, churn him as thoroughly as butter in a pail. Her very presence is a reminder that all is not as this dusty, marguerite villa would have him believe.

Ariadne looks at him like he should be dead, too.

And the thing is, what if she’s right?

 _He fucking hated the cold,_ Arthur tells her one morning, unprompted but for those warm, rabbit-fright eyes.

He feels like she should know that, but really, he has no idea how close she ever was to the man who is now only a shadow in the corner of his eye.

He can feel her sadness like a dreamcatcher over a bed.

(It’s only worth what you believe in, and Arthur set fire to his faith in Lithuania.)

.

.

_(B _ut now isn’t simply now. Now is also a cold reminder: one whole day later than yesterday, one year later than last year.)__

.

.

When Arthur stays with the Cobbs, he expects the tentative half-affection. He dreads it, of course. All the same, it’s not surprising to find his coffee refilled without asking and his choice twice in a row on movie night.

What surprises him is that most of the time, it isn’t Cobb instigating these little kindnesses.

It’s Phillipa.

Most of the time she is the precocious, eternally gleeful girl she’s always been. She does cartwheels in the living room behind her father’s back, complains loudly about the burnt bits on the meat at dinner and begs to stay up to watch Jeepers Creepers because after all, Ellamae from school was allowed to.

The other Phillipa, the scampering faerie who steals hugs from the houseguest and offers him half of her milk and cookies, is something Arthur isn’t accustomed to.

She becomes simultaneously older and younger, more like her mother and less like her, too.

“You should come for Christmas,” she says the day Arthur leaves. She’s got a heavy school bag slung over her shoulder and she’s wearing the makeup she promised her father she’d thrown away.

“I will,” he promises easily, because lies slide out of him like oil over the surface of water.

She is the daughter of a liar, though, and her disappointed seal eyes trail to the ground as she slinks out of the house after James.

Arthur’s unprepared for the broiling guilt that prickles all over him after the front door closes.

Cobb is in his office, probably unaware of his eldest’s perceptiveness.

(Obliviousness wasn’t a companion of his deranged grief; he’s carried an air of it all his life.)

Arthur stands in the hallway, wearing a three-piece suit that smells of the wrong laundry detergent. He isn’t used to this; the shame of disappointing someone, no less a twelve-year-old he loves more than his actual niece, whom he’s seen twice in the past decade.

But like both of her parents, Phillipa Cobb has dug herself under his skin, taken residence in his heart no matter what padlocks he tries to shut it up with.

He could cut off this limb now, hack through the sinew and bone before it grows cancerous, like most of Arthur’s steadfast desires. He doesn’t want to, though.

He’s been a selfish man all his life.

He’d be dead by now without the honeypot greed of his heart.

(He doesn't come for Christmas, but he does visit at Thanksgiving.)

.

.

Once, in Tunis, a boy with blood on his upper lip and a soccer ball under his arm. He looked up at the man who helped him to his feet, looked up with big, brown eyes full of grace and need. He laughed and kicked the ball and took the dinar without question, with gratitude and surprise.

.

.

“I wanted to thank you,” says the Englishman.

Not  _that_ Englishman. The other one.

 _Her_ Englishman.

The one with mud in his accent, bristly and bright.

Jacob Herveau, who didn’t need a yarn of gold to find his way to his own Ariadne.

“What for?” Arthur asks, good-natured and disbelieving.

Jacob toys with his wedding ring like he isn’t used to it yet.

They’re in Oslo, full of rain and autumn leaves, a cafe owned by a Londoner that Arthur likes in a tame, sexless kind of way.

“Giving me a chance,” Jacob says, earnest, the way his wife has always been. He wears it like a loose cloak, these learned patterns of love. “You didn’t have to give me a job just because my wife is your friend.”

Arthur has no taste for disingenuous modesty. Jacob knows full well Arthur doesn’t give jobs to people out of friendship.

Or maybe he’s just prickled by Jacob’s easy assumption that Arthur and Ariadne are friends.

Arthur sips his bitter tea and stares at a poster of Van Gogh’s sunflowers on the wall opposite. It’s hopeless and dull; nothing like the original.

He looks back at Jacob, those eyes the colour of chestnuts and a tight mouth.

“You’re better than her at the countryside. All her fields look like 1920s France.”

Jacob smiles the besotted smile of a newlywed. He clearly thinks it’s utterly adorable that Ariadne is partial to perfect, mossy loose brick walls and Friesian cows. Personally, Arthur finds it intolerable.

“Ever held a new born lamb?” Jacob asks.

Arthur shakes his head.

“I did see a jaguar in the Amazon, once.”

Jacob laughs. It’s a rolling chuckle, as warm as the buttery light that soaks the cafe, while rain batters the window behind them.

“I’ll take the lambs every time.”

“Which is why I asked you to take this job,” Arthur says, and Jacob does not attempt to hide the flush in his cheeks.

Arthur doesn’t finish his story.

.

.

(He only actually saw the tail. He was too busy looking at something else.)

.

.

Arthur first meets the fierce glint in Ariadne’s eyes on a Monday in Paris.

He’s taking some well-earned time off, waiting for Eames to finish a job in Mesopotamia.

 _(T _hat’s not a place anymore, you asshat__ , he’d said, but Eames had refused to admit to anything more. He’s secretive about his non-dream jobs, or perhaps possessive.)

Arthur’s stopped coming to Paris for his downtime ever since the Fischer Job. More than two million people, but it would be just his luck to run into Ariadne one day and be caught out.

He’s not sure why he’s harbouring such a reticence to tell her they share this city. Maybe because it was the first home that ever belonged only to him.

Still, Ariadne had emailed, asking if he could swing by the next time he’s crossing Western Europe. He delays three days and calls to offer a meet up.

Ariadne, who trusts him like he deserves it, gratefully suggests the Louvre.

Arthur’s not sure how he’s going to explain to Eames why he willingly entered an art gallery with Ariadne Warren when it takes at least a blowjob to convince him to go to one with Eames.

(The thing is, Arthur highly doubts Ariadne is going to spend their whole visit preening like a peacock and saying obtuse things like  _Go on, which is mine, can you guess?)_

So, Arthur agrees.

He arrives early, so he can circuit the galleries once alone. Ariadne had sounded close to shy on the phone yesterday. It hadn’t suited her.

He enters the first overpriced cafe and finds her sitting with a tall, athletic looking man. His long face is topped with a mop of dark hair and he looks, if possible, even more eager than Ariadne, whose expression is a blur of powdery, anxious delight.

“I ordered you a black coffee,” she blurts out as Arthur sits opposite them.

It’s not crowded in the cafe yet. The hum of the machinery and the lyrical jabber of French voices is soothing. Arthur feels alert, all the same, distrustful of this kind-faced boy-man in front of him.

“Who’s this?” he asks without commenting on Ariadne’s choice of beverage.

“I’m Jacob,” the boy-man says, holding out a hand that Arthur doesn’t take.

Jacob pulls it back to his lap awkwardly.

Ariadne looks eager to admonish Arthur but doesn’t quite dare.

“I don’t like being ambushed,” he says coldly, still not looking at her companion.

She has the good grace to appear guilty, though lacks the professionalism to do so convincingly. He’d like nothing more than to tell them both exactly what happened to the last stranger that interrupted a meeting with him.

(That’s Eames’ story, really, so he doesn’t.)

Instead he waits stonily for an answer.

“He’s my boyfriend,” Ariadne says quite abruptly and definitely too loudly. Whatever answer Arthur had been expecting, this isn’t it.

He raises his eyebrows high, struck dumb by the bizarre audacity of the situation.

At that moment, a waitress appears bearing three cups of coffee. Arthur thanks her as politely as he can manage. His eyes don’t leave Ariadne’s face.

He knows categorically that there’s more to this than  _meet The Boyfriend._

The Boyfriend looks discomfited and Arthur thinks he’s getting a rare insight into what Cobb will feel like when Phillipa starts bringing home  _those_ type of friends.

The implication of the thought makes Arthur want to fidget, so instead of speaking he drinks his coffee.

“Jacob knows,” Ariadne says with trepidation and pride.

When Arthur drops his coffee cup, it shatters on impact, splashing all three of them with dark, muddy spots.

.

.

 _You can’t blame her,_ Eames says on the phone that night.

 _You knew?_ Arthur demands.

 _Of course I did,_ Eames replies.

Because of course Eames knows everything, even about the people Arthur spends more time with than him.

.

.

_Did you notice –_

Yes, Eames. He’s English. I doubt it’s intentional.

.

.

The second time Arthur meets Jacob, they’re in Paris again. A bar, one that used to be a living reminder of Bohemia, now a sheer cut glass corporate nightmare.

He doesn’t call Eames afterwards, this time, because by then Eames is gone.

.

.

From Baltimore, a month on, Arthur flies to Mombasa.

If anyone else knows by now, it’s Yusuf, whom Arthur has never forgiven for the sedation deception. But he’s still good at what he does, and Arthur foolishly thinks he won’t ask questions.

Yusuf greets him warily, like a fox to a badger, distrustful. Ready.

 _Maybe it’s better this way,_ Yusuf suggests.

Refuses to give him a new PASIV without proof he isn’t planning to blind himself with regret.

When they go under, deep into Arthur’s subconscious, it’s as hostile as it’s always been. A decadent city that looks like Vienna, feels like Boston.

The police looks more like the military and there’s a heavily guarded bank on every street corner. Most windows are mirrors, light glancing off them, heating the dream by an extra ten degrees. Arthur allows himself to be smug when Yusuf reluctantly agrees he’s stable enough to deserve a PASIV.

He should be glad, but disappointment settles inside him like dew over a field.

.

.

Eames shows up once and only once.

Ghost in the machine of Arthur’s mind, protecting him.

.

.

It never occurs to Arthur to be afraid for himself. As the days after Eames stretch into ever easing months, he never considers the possibility he might be in danger, too.

When he ties the man called Cameron Willick to a chair, scrapes the skin off his knees with a pen knife and prises off a kneecap, he doesn’t bother asking if anyone’s coming for him, as well.

.

.

“You’ll pay for this,” Willick says before he dies.

“I doubt it,” Arthur says, because he’s already paid his highest price.

.

.

 _You're so fucking soft,_ he said once, when it was true.

.

.

 _Just look at me now,_ Arthur wants to say, but there's nobody to tell.

.

.

“Who was that?” Arthur asks as Eames re-enters the bedroom from the balcony.

He’s wearing boxers and a navy dressing gown. Tosses his phone onto the dresser and starts rummaging inside for a shirt.

“Eames,” Arthur says, louder this time.

“Mmm?”

“Look at me.”

Eames turns around, a crumpled, raspberry coloured shirt in his hand. His hair’s a mess of cowlicks, fluffy and gold from four consecutive jobs within ten miles of the equator.

He’s tanned and lovely and the crease of his brow speaks trouble that doesn’t match the bed-rumpled softness of the rest of him.

“Yes, darling?” he asks with an innocence he’s never possessed.

Arthur pulls himself up to sitting, back pressed against the cold wood of the headboard; folds his arms and squints.

“Who was that?”

“Just a job,” Eames replies too quickly, too dismissively. He knows he’s blundered; he returns to his search for clean pants and continues with breezy half-interest. “Some ambassador has been doing a lot of dirty deals. Percy Sheridan needs me in Lithuania on Friday.”

Arthur eyes the high tension of Eames’ shoulders with well nurtured suspicion.

“Does he need a point?”

“Nope,” Eames says, pulling out a pair of old jeans and tossing them on the bed behind him along with the horribly creased shirt.

When he sees Arthur’s annoyed expression, he lifts his palms in surrender.

“I’m ironing it!” he says insistently. “Don’t get your bloody knickers in a twist.”

He scurries out the room, comes back with the iron in both hands, thrust before him proudly, as if hoping for recognition.

Arthur huffs, unfolding his arms and reaching for his cup of coffee on the bedside cabinet. It’s still warm, cupped between his cold hands as he sips.

He looks up, where above the headboard hangs a forgery of a Francis Bacon, painted by the man in front of him now fiddling with the iron like it’s alien technology.

“I’ll do it,” Arthur grumbles with a sigh.

Eames, never one to pass up an opportunity to avoid laundry related duties, drops the device happily on top of his clothes and clambers back onto the bed.

“Thanks, love,” he says, dropping a kiss onto one of Arthur’s eyelids before climbing back beneath the covers. Despite having just been outside on an October morning in Paris, Eames’ skin is still very warm.

Arthur wriggles closer as the Englishman wraps his arms around his middle.

“I could come anyway,” Arthur says after a pause. He feels Eames’ smile against his bare waist.

“Oh, I bet you could,” he teases.

Arthur rolls his eyes.

“Dick,” Arthur adds, then, “To Lithuania. I’m good with politicians.”

Eames blinks lazily, exhaling loudly and stroking his fingertips along Arthur’s ribs, not quite ticklish. His eyes drift up to Arthur’s face.

“You mean you’re good with liars.”

The sharp light in those dark blue, thunder grey eyes is familiar. Arthur feels something warm and welcome grip him, like a fist around his heart and his stomach and his cock.

He threads his fingers through that fluffy, gold head of hair, scratching at Eames’ scalp until he moans loud enough for Arthur to feel it in his pelvis.

“Very good,” Arthur agrees.

“It won’t take long,” Eames says. “I’ll be back in a fortnight, tops. You stay here and practise your best man speech.”

“For the last time,” Arthur grumbles, but he never gets any further because in that moment Eames pushes upwards, most of his weight on Arthur’s hips, and snatches a kiss from his downturned mouth.

Arthur responds instinctively, lips slack and tongue strong. Eames tastes of whisky and tea, even though it’s barely eight in the morning.

He’s stopped trying so hard to hide the devil’s bottles that he leaves dotted around every place they go, showing no sign of letting up. Arthur can’t remember the last time he went a day without seeing a drink in Eames’ hand and it hurts him like a bad joint before rain, to know all the sunshine and dreams and art heists in the world won’t help him fix this man in his bed.

Eames pulls back, as if sensing the rocky tide of Arthur’s thoughts. He re-adjusts to lean on Arthur’s thighs, his body lying flush against his outstretched legs. He’s never more beautiful than when he forgets to pose.

Arthur kisses his again.

“I’ll give Percy a call,” Arthur says.

Eames’ eyes, ice and disgruntlement.

“You should stay here,” he counters. “Or, better yet, go see Iggy Pop. He’s doing a gig in  _Lyon,_ of all the fucking gin joints in the world.”

“Why don’t you want me to come to Lithuania?” Arthur demands, feeling more and more like some kind of jaded lover.

His feelings towards Percy Sheridan are little better than indifferent. It’s Eames’ evasion that’s troubling, makes him feel wary, makes him feel too much like Cusco, the doctors bellowing, Eames struggling against their restraining hands as he’s force-fed charcoal.

Eames, callously oblivious, rolls his eyes.

“It’ll be boring,” he warns, in a tone that might better suit a character in Jurassic Park, right before the power goes out.

Arthur drains his coffee cup, sets it down and wraps his arms around Eames’ broad shoulders, hands smoothing down the back of his soft, blue dressing gown.

“This is mine,” he says, pulling at the loose belt.

Eames kisses his throat in a reverent apology; dips his tongue into the creases of Arthur’s collar bones.

“However will I make it up to you?” he asks, sly and smiling, his deft fingers wandering and his eyes fixed up at Arthur’s reluctant grin.

“Feel free to do your best,” Arthur replies, leaning back, burying his hands in Eames’ hair and looking up at the smudgy, colourless painting above his head.

.

.

(It will be over two years before Arthur looks at this painting again.)

.

.

_(He _stood between death and life as between night and morning, and thought with a soaring rapture, I am not afraid.)__

.

.

“Do you still enjoy it?” Cobb asks.

Thanksgiving, six years after Mal is gone. Arthur is staying over, mostly at Phillipa’s insistence.

Mal’s parents are here, which is equal parts excellent and unbearable. Mal’s mother, Gabrielle, is a needling, furious woman. She smothers her grandchildren in such generous affection, that the young Cobbs are too young to understand it is as malicious as it is genuine, meant to punish Dom and justify her own resilient anger.

Arthur’s never said as much, but he mostly sees where she’s coming from.

However doting a husband Cobb had been, he’d failed deeply where his family was concerned. What sort of responsible parent experiments on themselves with dangerous chemicals when they have two small children depending on them?

Of course, this logic puts an equal measure of blame on Mal, but Arthur wouldn’t expect Gabrielle to be capable of blaming her dead daughter for her grandchildren’s suffering. Certainly not when her husband and son-in-law are right there, so readily prepared to shoulder her fury.

Stephen is easier to deal with. He’s gentle and collected and he has a temperament that speaks of the sort of wisdom that is earned, is worked hard for.

(It’s a more coltish happiness that stirs in Arthur’s heart, too, to hear the flat lines of London in his voice, even after so many years flitting between France and the United States.)

So, Arthur stays for Thanksgiving.

Gabrielle and James potter about in the kitchen; Stephen and Phillipa design a castle together out of cards and delicacy.

Meanwhile, Cobb hands Arthur a beer in the living room, slumps into the couch and asks, “Do you still enjoy it?”

“Dreaming?”

Cobb nods, sips his beer and smacks his lips.

“Yes,” Arthur replies.

It’s an automatic response buried inside him like DNA. He thinks about it, then reaffirms, “Yeah, I do. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t want to.”

Cobb doesn’t seem convinced by this.

And, well, maybe he’s right to question it.

Is Arthur happy? The honest answer is no, but he’s resigned himself to that. And in any case, that’s not what Cobb asked.

Does he enjoy it?

“Every dream,” Arthur says. “First level. A new city, an old one. A field of sheep or, or Mount Everest. It still amazes me. If one day I stop being amazed, then it’s time for me to quit. But it hasn’t happened yet.”

Cobb seems barely anymore satisfied. He doesn’t voice his disbelief, probably because nothing good can come from where his thoughts have taken him.

“Is it worth it?” he asks instead.

“Yes,” Arthur replies, without any doubt in his thundering heart.

He knows Cobb’s got it all wrong, now.

After Mal, dreaming for Cobb was a necessary, punishing jail sentence; an inescapable reminder of what had taken the love of his life away from him.

It’s nothing like that for Arthur.

Cobb met Mal first, and together they coloured in the shading of their relationship with dreams.

Dreaming brought Arthur to Eames, though it isn’t a melancholy, pathetic attempt to cling to one last reminder of the man he might have spent a lifetime arguing with. It’s just dreaming; wondrous inexplicable creation.

And if it gave him Eames, not just once but twice, who is he to say it won’t also help fix the bleeding wound left by Eames’ departure?

He doesn’t explain this to Cobb. Instead, he retreats to the playroom, so Phillipa can give him a tour of the not-Hogwarts Castle she’s built with her grandfather.

“Isn’t she marvellous?” Stephen asks.

It’s unclear whether he means the castle or its young architect.

“Absolutely,” Arthur replies. “You’re a natural, Phillipa.”

From the doorway, Cobb hovers anxiously, the spectre of his demons blocking his entry like an armed guard.

Sometimes, not often, Arthur’s really fucking glad Eames was murdered by a cold-hearted mercenary.

The alternative, he thinks, is so much more difficult to bear.

.

.

(What Arthur doesn’t notice is that Cobb, he’s hovering and fretting and worrying, yes, but he isn’t looking at his daughter, nor his father-in-law. He’s looking at his friend.)

.

.

 _You need to tell him,_ Yusuf had said.

 _I will,_ Cobb had replied.

.

.

(It’s been twenty months.)

.

.

It takes Arthur a while to not be disappointed Eames was gunned down by a nobody for nothing more than petty, dreamshare rivalry. He trains himself to be glad he was there, at least, despite Eames’ every effort to dissuade him from coming along.

 _He stole from the wrong man!_ Cameron Willick screamed, blood black on his chin, the tip of Arthur’s knife teasing blood from the root of his dick.

Arthur hadn’t wanted to know more.

Eames paid the price of taking the wrong job once before, back in ‘09. It almost destroyed him.

(There are worse things than a thunderstorm in Lithuania.)

.

.

After Cameron Willick’s body is found in the Danube, Arthur flies to Thailand.

Actually, he flies to Hong Kong, but he stops overnight in Bangkok. He stays in the same hotel as the last time.

He almost asks for the same room, but that would be sentimental, and Arthur might be selfish, but he’s rarely indulgent about it.

He stays in the hotel where he half-carried a blackout drunk Eames, crawled onto the bed next to him for the first time in over a year and whispered the same words over and over, practicing them for the morning.

_( _I loved you too much, you fucking asshole.)__

Then morning came, and Eames was so afraid of him, said horrible things like  _I thought you’d find me,_ made needy, wounded confessions like  _I’m clean._

Arthur’s courage dissipated like smoke in a breeze. His own confession felt trivial compared to Eames'.

In retrospect, maybe he should have opened with it. Maybe the next eight hundred and thirty-five days would have been even better. Maybe there would have been more of them.

.

.

But he didn’t. They weren’t. There wasn’t.

He kept them to himself; Eames spent the rest of his days as a functioning alcoholic; then Eames died amidst the wreckage of a warehouse in Lithuania, while Arthur covered some of the bullet holes with his trembling hands and watched his face turn ashen with cold.

.

.

_You know, you are quite the catch, Arthur._

Am I?

_So serious. You need to loosen up. Here. It’s Goslings and coke. Have some. Go on. Live a little. Has anyone ever told you you’re too serious?_

Yes, they have. Quite often.

_Well, I’ll tell you again._

.

.

“Arthur, I’m getting married,” Ariadne says, standing in the hallway outside his apartment, the address of which he had no idea she knew.

He’s standing in a pair of jogging bottoms and a t-shirt that he definitely didn’t buy himself. His entire apartment smells of garlic, because he has no idea how to stop himself when he’s cooking. Ariadne doesn’t comment on any of it, maybe because she’s kind or maybe because she’s nervous.

She’s wrapped up in a thick, long coat, a rose woollen scarf, with matching hat and gloves.

“I know you have lots of reasons to not come,” she continues quickly, struggling to keep her mouth above her scarf. “But I’m inviting you and I hope you come. I know you think we’re just colleagues, but we’re friends. You’re my friend. I’m inviting Cobb, too, if that helps persuade you.

“It’s next month. Here, in Paris. So, umm. There.”

She thrusts an envelope at him, thick and written on the front in loopy curls,  _ARTHUR ANONYMOUS._

Arthur smiles at her, those bright eyes and her soft trembling. A glitter of glee shivers through him.

“Who are you marrying?” he asks casually.

Laughter bursts out of her tiny frame, a breeze of relief and joy.

“Asshole!” she cries, stepping forward to hug him tightly.

They’ve never hugged before. Neither of them are particularly interested in hugging, never had cause for it. Still, it warms him, her arms around his waist, face at his shoulder.

“I’m very happy for you,” he says with only a tiny choke in his voice.

“Thanks,” she murmurs. “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” he says, not particularly thrilled by the invasion. Still, in for a penny, he ushers her through to the kitchen, which opens into a living space that’s full to the brim with books.

She does her best not to stare too closely, he can tell. But she’s inquisitive and he can’t pretend to dislike her for it.

“Have you eaten?” he asks. “I’m on my third lasagne.”

“Why?” she asks, peering at the coffee table covered in coasters and papers.

“I was hungry,” he replies, which is true, even if it’s only half the truth. “You want some?”

“Sure,” she says, peeling off her many layers until she looks more like a human being again.

When he looks back at her, she’s got a heavy hardback in her hands. It’s about the Peloponnesian War, which Arthur cares very little about.

It was one of many treasures that found their way to him, keepsakes that accumulated like dust. Worthless and wanted.

“I put a plus one on your invite,” she says, unabashed as she looks back at him from across the room. “It felt more awkward not to.”

Arthur's mouth moves into a shape less like a smile, twitching amusement. She stares expectantly, braced for whatever response he throws at her.

“Maybe I’ll ask your Professor Miles,” Arthur says with a shrug.

Another of those relieved, joyful barks of laughter. Ariadne puts the book down and approaches a faded photo of Arthur’s mother on the wall.

“She’s very beautiful,” she comments, but doesn’t ask for details. “Eames told me about this place.”

Arthur doesn’t have it in him to be shocked or irritated. He adjusts the oven temperature, checks the first lasagne has sufficiently cooled, then puts it in the freezer whole.

“Did he give you the address?”

“No, I called Cobb.”

Of course she did, and of course Cobb told her. Arthur’s never been a fan of mother-henning. It rankles him, but he’s apathetic in his annoyance.

“How are you?” she asks in a tone that demands honesty.

He has no reason to lie to her.

“Busy,” he says. “Tired. Bored with all these corporate jobs. Do you know, I’ve been inside the heads of more bankers and lawyers this year than the rest of my whole career so far?”

Ariadne makes a sympathetic, displeased sound.

“Tell me about it. I never thought I’d say this, but I wish someone needed an inception. Hell, just a job that requires two levels would do me.”

Arthur nods, shaking a carton of apple juice at her. She accepts, and he pours two glasses.

He joins her at the largest bookcase.

“How many of these are yours?” she asks bluntly.

“Less than half,” he answers, which is true.

Less than a third is also true, but he decides that’s too morose.

“Will you get rid of them?”

Arthur narrows his eyes.

“Which one do you want?”

Ariadne grins, looking pleased and guilty and excited.

“Nobody has a first edition  _Tom Sawyer!”_ she cries, pulling it from the shelf and waving it at him as hard as she dares.

“Well, now you do,” Arthur says, returning to his lasagne.

Ariadne’s expressive gesticulating drops at that, like she’d been expecting a fight.

“Are you sure?” she asks.

Arthur wonders why, after all these years, if they are apparently  _friends._ Ariadne now thinks he’s going to get sentimental over goddamn Mark Twain.

“Keep it, Ariadne,” he says. “Consider it an engagement present.”

.

.

In the end, she leaves with four books, a poster of Monet’s sunflowers, and a Roman arrowhead dug up from a back yard in Yorkshire.

.

.

_(Of course you always had that detached quality as if you were playing a game without much concern over whether you won or lost, and now that you’ve lost the game, not lost but just quit playing, you have that rare sort of charm that usually only happens in very old or hopelessly sick people, the charm of the defeated.)_

.

.

Nineteen months later, Cobb calls. He has something real important to tell him.

.

.

Something vital, like oxygen and bullets.

.

.

(Come on, darling. We’ll be late.)

.

.

In Brisbane, a hot September, wetter than usual; Arthur dreams.

He has a dream while lying in bed next to an architect who fucks better than he designs. He dreams about his mother, and about a woman who was bludgeoned to death by her boyfriend in 1993.

It’s the first natural dream he’s had in over half a decade. Can barely speak for the crystal silence of its ending.

He wakes up so anxious he has no answer for his bed-warmer’s damp questions. He doesn’t even take his boxers off before getting into the shower.

“Shit,” he gasps, untangling his legs from the sodden material and dropping them to the bottom of the shower stall with a slapping sound.

He grabs the soap, lathering his muscles and scraping at his skin with his fingernails.

Long red lines rise up along his arms and torso, all the way down his legs; angry scratches that should remind him of rough sex but don’t even remind him of bad sex.

He feels ready to peel these layers right off himself. Start again with skin untouched by another person.

Skin that doesn’t remember his mother’s hand on his cheek, or Eames’ kisses along his spine.

The shower is hot, the soap strong. He considers jerking off, but he knows he’ll get halfway and give up, like last time.

 _Arthur, there’s something you don’t know,_ Cobb said on the phone yesterday.

 _You deserve to know,_ he said, too.

Suddenly, desperately, pain rips through Arthur like a bolt of lightning driving through the heart of a tree. Under his fingers blood spots ooze out from his inner forearm. A sound rips out of him, too.

He cries with the same childlike exasperation, same wanton despair, as he did the day after his mother was dropped into the ground in a beautiful pine box.

His knees split into bruises on the bottom of the shower, his forehead smacks into the tiles and he sobs into his red palms.

“No, no, no,” he cries, over and over again as a fist bangs on the bathroom door.

 _“Arthur!”_ Thomas the subpar architect, the adequate lover, calls through the wood but Arthur ignores him.

He inhales a mouthful of water and chokes. Vomit rises up out of him and splashes into his lap, washed away by the water in an instant as he heaves and coughs and shakes.

Sickness envelops him, heavy as the guilt that drove him to Thomas’ lazy, rum soaked advances in the first place.

 _Arthur,_ Cobb said on the phone yesterday.

Arthur’s never hated his own name more.

 _Fischer killed Eames,_ Cobb said.  _Fischer killed Eames and, Arthur. He had help._

 _Cobol told Fischer how to find us,_ Cobb said.

Arthur feels his lungs shrinking tight, shrivelling like dried dates inside the vacuum of his chest as blood pounds through his brain and the dam he had built to withstand the tsunami of Cobb’s words crumbles to nothing. Arthur sobs in a shower in Brisbane three years too late.

Because what Cobb really meant was, _They told him how to find you._

What he meant was,  _They found Eames because of you._

.

.

When the thought finally emerges, coherent and brilliant as starlight, Arthur tilts his face into the blistering water, opens his mouth and screams.

.

.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from: I am part of that part that at first was one, part of the darkness from which light has sprung. ~ Goethe, Faust: Part One
> 
> I’m not brave anymore darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me. ~ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms
> 
> But now isn’t simply now. Now is also a cold reminder: one whole day later than yesterday, one year later than last year. ~ Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man
> 
> He stood between death and life as between night and morning, and thought with a soaring rapture, I am not afraid. ~ Mary Renault, Fire From Heaven
> 
> Of course you always had that detached quality as if you were playing a game without much concern over whether you won or lost, and now that you’ve lost the game, not lost but just quit playing, you have that rare sort of charm that usually only happens in very old or hopelessly sick people, the charm of the defeated. ~ Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof


End file.
